Stomach cancer is a serious condition and to save life it has been shown that the whole stomach needs to be surgically removed although the cancer may be small. Patients with stomach cancer normally get their whole stomach surgically removed, the operation called total gastrectomy. This means the oesophagus and the intestine is sutured together. These patients quality of life is dramatically reduced. Their food supply is normally without both reservoir and valves-creating serious problems in terms of ability to eat and ability to keep the weight.
The placement of the normal stomach 102 of a person 100 is seen in FIG. 1. A more detailed view of the anatomy of a normal stomach is shown in FIG. 2a. In the gastrointestinal tract, the oesophagus 202 normally transcends into the stomach 204 at the cardia area 206. The stomach 204 then transcends downstream into the duodenum 212 of the intestine 210 at the pyloris 208. For persons having their stomach 204 surgically removed (hereinafter referred to as patients), one method is to surgically connect the oesophagus 202 directly to the intestine 210. The result of such a surgical operation is shown in FIG. 2b. The most proximal part of the intestine 210, i.e. the duodenum 212, is not able to reach to the oesophagus 202 and therefore the proximal jejunum 214 is cut and the distal side sutured to the oesophagus 202 and the proximal part of the jejunum 214 comprising duodenum 212 and the gall connection proximal is sutured end to side to jejunum 214 further distal creating a so called Roux-en-Y-connection.
Because it is not easy to reach the oesophagus 202 with the intestine 210, they are normally connected end to end like a tube without any reservoir or valves. Normally the cardia 206 (the ring muscle between the stomach and oesophagus) keeps the food passage way closed to avoid reflux problems but cardia 206 is normally removed when performing a Roux-en-Y operation.
The overall result is a very unpleasant situation for the patient. The patients have large difficulties to keep their weight and normally feel themselves in a really bad shape, with several food related bad feelings. The situation for the patients is so complicated that studies have shown a dramatic increase in suicide in this group of patients.
Furthermore, there exist also other possible solutions, such as xenotransplantations and intravenous drip. Xenotransplantation is a method where an organ from an animal is transplanted to a patient. However, the immune rejection effects are serious and the method is not a usable alternative. The method of living with a nutrition drip has various disadvantages, for instance the patient needs to bring droplet equipment and loses also the moment of eating. The situation of life for a patient with nutrition drip is far from natural.
The ability to replace the stomach with an artificial stomach would increase quality of life dramatically for these patients. Such an artificial stomach may be used independently of the reason for removing the stomach.